News

DARPA XS-1 Spaceplane Award Coming Soon

—John A. Tirpak5/11/2017

AFA Caption

​An artist rendering of an XS-1 spaceplane. DARPA illustration.

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The Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency expects to award a contract for the XS-1
spaceplane program “soon,” according to an agency spokesman. Rick Weiss
said DARPA is in the final stages of a “downselect” to choose one
company to proceed into the
flying phase of the spaceplane, which is meant to be a two-stage to
orbit vehicle potentially able to bring down the cost of space lift “by
orders of magnitude,” according to DARPA’s website. Weiss acknowledged
that program plans had anticipated getting contracting
completed by early this year, but added that delays are not
unusual when so many new technologies and capabilities are being
integrated within an ambitious program such as XS-1. Phase I of the program explored concepts offered by Boeing partnered with Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems teamed with XCOR Aerospace, and Northrop Grumman working with Virgin Galactic. However, the Phase II contractor won’t necessarily be chosen from the three Phase I participants. After downselect, a critical design review would take place in 2018 and a series of flights could be made as early as 2020. One of the program requirements is to fly 10 suborbital or orbital missions in as many days, achieving space operations with “aircraft-like” frequency, DARPA said. If successful, a “public-private partnership” model of operating the vehicles could be adopted, DARPA documents show.